


dive

by thepointsdonotmatter



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Broken Hannibal, Hurt Hannibal, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:51:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointsdonotmatter/pseuds/thepointsdonotmatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fight scene in Fromage veers into a different path; Hannibal tries to hide it; Will finds out.</p>
<p>Fill for this <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1847.html?thread=1691703#cmt1691703">kink meme prompt</a>: What we saw in Fromage is what makes it into the official report, but what doesn't get reported is that Tobias also sexually assaulted Hannibal (or attempted to). When Will gets to the scene of the fight, he is able to read that the scene was somewhat faked to cover something up. He figures things out, and understands why Hannibal would hide that detail. Cue Will stepping up and acting as a bit of intermediate between Hannibal and all the law enforcement who unknowingly making him relive the assault trauma. Bonus if there's a scene where Will sees the whole fight from Tobias' POV, which makes him feel really guilty and disgusted with himself, Hannibal distancing himself because he knows that Will 'saw' everything, and Will being his usual jittery self yet trying to do what he can to protect and comfort Hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dive

They walk up to the door and Will hesitates. His fingers shy away from the handle and hang in mid-air, still lilted in a downward grab. He can hear the murmur of voices inside, pressing into the walls like an ache, and he wishes they would retreat. He wishes Hannibal would open the door first, as it usually goes, hands bracketed against the frame: but he doesn’t, of course.

Jack clears his throat behind him; he’s either unaware or uncaring of the anomalies, and pushes forward. Will lifts his chin up to avoid a mouth full of coat. He walks inside, slowly, more patiently. He knows it will be an ugly sight and he can feel his mind clicking to prepare itself.

He isn’t wrong. Will takes in the office and thinks of rows of gutted fish in a market. There are only two fish here, now, already bagged, but there is also a finality to the smashed end table and overturned chairs and disarray of papers. Officers and forensics crouch like vendors inspecting meat. Will very deliberately keeps his back straight. He tries to put his footsteps in the same places as the last time he came in here. An officer hands him a pair of gloves and he rolls his neck in irritation, stuffs the blue latex digits into his pocket. 

Hannibal sits behind his desk as if he were in the middle of an appointment. But the two slashes of light from the windows expose his bloodied face, the bruises, the tears in his suit. Hannibal keeps his shoulders hunched, deflecting as much of the brightness as he can.

“How bad?” Will asks. 

The medic looks up from where he’s knelt down. “Pretty nasty stab to his lower leg. If it were any higher, blood loss would be significant. Although, I would still advise—“ 

“A visit to the hospital won’t be necessary,” Hannibal interjects quietly; Will says “hospital visit?” at the same juncture, a neat crisscross. And then they look at each other, for the first time since Will came in, identical smiles knocked crooked. 

If it were an askew painting, Will would reach up and re-orient it. But here there’s little else to do but let the smiles wear off, exhausted, and watch as Jack approaches with questions uncurling.

Will makes leaps in his thinking. It’s not as easy to explain as comparisons to fish markets, it’s, it’s the discrete, airless fissures, moments coalescing together. Hannibal waves away the medic and doesn’t lean back; Jack flicks open his phone; someone off the side accidentally brushes against the piano and trips a note. 

The carpet is completely smooth, too undisturbed, no fibers frayed in opposing directions –

Will makes his leap.

Surprisingly, Will keeps his breathing normal. He turns his head back, gradual because he wants to be discreet, glances over the scene again. He doesn’t double-check a realization unless he wants to be wrong. 

Then he doesn’t spare another second: he says, “Jack,” butchering the word.

Hannibal’s gaze snaps to him, inhumanly fast, Will feels it scorching down to his bones and he has to turn slightly to stop the wince trying to escape. Jack’s scowl at being interrupted is a fly easily swatted, though, so he continues, “I don’t think asking Dr. Lecter endless questions is going to do much good.”

“I have two bodies here,” Jack replies carefully. “I just need an overview of what happened.”

Hannibal’s fingers twitch, the spasm so contained it’d be seen as random by most others. Will tries not to dwell on it, the lack of discipline inherent in the gesture; he says, perhaps an urgent note creeping in, “Empathy disorder, remember. I can tell you all about Tobias Budge’s motives later.”

“Later,” Jack repeats, nodding, the inflection changing it into a promise. He’s still annoyed, though not at Hannibal. That’s good.

Will doesn’t move as everyone shuffles out, yet somehow he still feels threatening, imposing, like the shade of a tree meant to be dead. He can’t stop his look at the carpet, again. There would be a single drop of blood, nestled there, if he examined even closer. He can’t keep his face blank, doesn’t know what to say.

And Hannibal is watching him, and he looks livid, a tempest of emotions barely held back.

He waits for Will to awkwardly leave – throwing a final glance over his shoulder, worried and hesitant – and only then does he try to stand up. A stab of pain, something raw and human. He has to throw a hand out against the table, body limping forward: pathetic. 

He breathes in deeply and closes his eyes until they hurt. 

\--

That night, Hannibal goes out and kills a man. He kills a man, and he’s not even careful about it. He drags him into the woods, cuts a long stripe down his middle, grounds himself in the wetness of guts and garbled screams. He pulls out organs halfway and breaks the man’s arm in three different places when he feebly tries to push him away. Legs twitch, pinned helplessly beneath Hannibal’s weight.

The man dies slowly, drowning in his own blood. 

The vivisection leaves him unusually lightheaded. Nonetheless, Hannibal stares down at the glassy, unseeing eyes, and the glint of teeth in a mouth still partially bent back with horror. Let him rot here. Let the animals feast on him. 

He has to remind himself to smile at his work.

\--

Will stares down at the glassy, unseeing eyes of the trout he has caught from the lake. 

“Hannibal,” he realizes out loud, cold breath fogging out like spider web wisps:

“You killed him with intent.”

\--

Before the pink sunrise can grasp the entire sky, Will retraces his steps back to the office. The yellow tape looks wrong, pinned across the door, so he takes it down. He’s still clutching it when he stands in the center of the empty room and sees the pendulum swing.

\--

_I hit him repeatedly, but he won’t go down. He’s a better fighter than I thought. He, he will be my crowning achievement, my Ninth Symphony._

_We grapple on the desk and fall to the floor. I manage to stab him in the leg, and he recoils, lets his guard down for one second. It’s all I need. This is my design._

_One simple throw of my violin string. It winds around his thigh, tightens its razor sharp noose. I keep him on a short leash, using my heavier weight on his back to keep him helplessly pinned down._

_He struggles, he growls, his fingers scrabble on the carpet, trying to find purchase. I twist a hand in his hair, smash his head down once, twice. He groans, movements losing that precise edge, and I pause, a lurid grin blooming forth._

_He loves control. He thrives on it. I will take that away from him, and then I will display his body in all its humiliation. This is my design._

_I make short work of his pants, nearly ripping them. Next, my own. The clink of a belt buckle seems to alert him, makes him regain some of his senses. His struggles renew, fuzzily, and I dislocate his shoulder with a tut._

_He is stripped and bared for me. I force my way inside him, inch by inch…_

_He tries to remain stoic, refusing to give me anything. His legs twitch, now and then, and he keeps his face buried in the carpet. I mouth at his neck, pull viciously on the violin string in time to my thrusts. A thin, choked noise ekes out from him, then, and I hiss with pleasure._

_“Good,” I say, and pet his hair like a dog._

\--

The yellow tape on the ground like a girl’s abandoned hair ribbon; a gulp of air, wild and mad: Will barely opens his eyes in time to stumble to the trash can and empty his stomach. He lies there too long, braced on all fours, trembling. He’s seen the truth now, in the center of it all, and he did it, he cracked the fault lines in Hannibal’s façade. Is this how surgeons feel, he wonders. What runs through their mind when they’ve peeled back the skin and hold a heart in their hand, someone’s secret: the secret of how they live, one fevered beat at a time.

He wishes he could blot out the drive to Hannibal’s house, delete the sweaty palms and jittery nerves like a swath of sleepwalking. 

Hannibal opens the door, the gesture so familiar it seems like a mirage now; he’s dressed flawlessly in a dark blue three-piece suit, hair neatly gelled back despite the bruises marring his face. 

“Can I come in?” Will ventures.

Hannibal inclines his head, letting the shadows burrow around his cheekbones, and it’s only a little clipped when he says, “Yes, of course.”

Will follows him in, down the curve of the hallway. He’s never been in the living room before: the colors are all muted and understated here. There’s a decanter of whiskey out, an ashtray. He watches Hannibal light a cigarette, dipping his chin, hand expertly cupped. 

“Didn’t know you smoked,” he says, before he can stop himself.

Hannibal looks up. “I don’t,” he replies, shortly.

The air brims full with tension. Will wants to shrink into himself; he feels like a waste of space, woefully inadequate. He sweats and watches Hannibal finish the cigarette and immediately light another one. His measured exhales, blowing out wreaths of smoke as if he cherishes them more than anything. 

“So you told Jack Crawford,” Hannibal finally says. He sounds impatient.

Will shakes his head, it comes out a quick jerk. “I—no. He didn’t _send_ me here or anything. I, I haven’t told anybody.”

Hannibal ignores him. He’s blinking rapidly, eyes downcast. “You told him what I did, yes? How I didn’t stop when Tobias Budge was unconscious at my feet. How I deliberately—“ his expression flickers, turns desperately angry, “ _cracked_ that bone china pate?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Will half-shouts. He scrubs a hand across his face. When there’s no answer, he tries to explain: “What he did to you...I can’t even begin to imagine how…”

He meets Hannibal’s steel gaze. “I don’t blame you,” he finishes lamely. “I…I’m just worried about you.”

Hannibal is watching him warily, but it doesn’t hide the wounded tilt to his stance, the way his fingers are shaking slightly where they pinch the cigarette. He doesn’t move back when Will takes a step towards him, so Will takes another step. And another, another.

He’s so close to him: they’re both shrouded in smoke. Words wither up and cram in his throat. Hannibal drops the cigarette, eyes tracking its descent, the globules flitting back and forth, considering, waiting. Then he painstakingly leans forward, erasing space. Will watches Hannibal’s eyelashes splay out like oriental fans. He reaches up and gently grabs hold of a lapel. Neither pushing him back or pulling him in: just a fact, a statement, that he is here, that they both exist. 

Hannibal kisses him, and Will kisses him back, hand curling into a fist to bunch up the expensive fabric. He kisses him back with the same desperation and manic energy: pours all the things he wants to say but can’t into it, lets Hannibal shove him back until he hits the wall, shoulders looming over him, oddly protective.

Hannibal’s mouth tastes like ash and death and hope. 

There is a sublime quality to this and Will shivers. He can’t tell if they’ve been kissing for seconds or years, if he’s been expecting this the whole time: if he was walking along piers looking at all the dead people for eons, if he was the drowned man, or the murderer, or the man who dove in and dragged them both from the water. When he and Hannibal surface for air, they do not part. A thin line of saliva connects their lips, and Hannibal presses their foreheads together, their harsh breaths threading together and their heartbeats knocking together. 

The first drops of rain start hitting the skylight, a soft hum.

Hannibal’s face is impassive, but he doesn’t let go of Will’s jaw, doesn’t move an inch. “Stay the night,” he says, and he says it plainly; it’s not a promise or a prayer or a plea, but it’s the biggest admittance Will knows he’ll get.

Will closes his eyes and breathes, “yes.”


End file.
